tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post2798939618147389984..comments2015-03-02T08:15:11.963-05:00Comments on In the Middle: LabyrinthsJeffrey Cohenhttps://plus.google.com/110433684739546897626noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-20648113506542369372010-10-18T21:33:10.759-04:002010-10-18T21:33:10.759-04:00Thank you kindly.Thank you kindly.danicahttp://enthusiastica.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-75191785511499105172010-10-18T18:15:58.519-04:002010-10-18T18:15:58.519-04:00Anonymous, you may cite anything here at ITM with ...Anonymous, you may cite anything here at ITM with proper attribution (author and URL). Glad something is of use.Jeffrey J. Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-79904085719902219922010-10-18T17:17:37.174-04:002010-10-18T17:17:37.174-04:00Jeffrey,
May I / how might I cite this talk of you...Jeffrey,<br />May I / how might I cite this talk of yours?<br />- a studentAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-30691636605289529522010-10-16T22:29:19.714-04:002010-10-16T22:29:19.714-04:00Cf. &quot;Because God cannot be seen by man, among...Cf. &quot;Because God cannot be seen by man, among his other wonderful ordinances he made many things, such as noise, odor, and wind, whose power is evident but whose substance cannot be seen, so that no one might think that there is no God just because mortal eyes cannot see him. Following their example and proof, we behold God by his power, purpose, and works even though he is invisible&quot; (Lactantius).Nicola Masciandarohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01279665722551517693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-28879683965886817552010-10-15T11:28:53.659-04:002010-10-15T11:28:53.659-04:00You may also want to use this comic strip as a sli...<a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/10/15/" rel="nofollow">You may also want to use this comic strip as a slide.</a><br /><br />Or maybe not.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1573133302349777012010-10-15T11:10:32.342-04:002010-10-15T11:10:32.342-04:00Good stuff, Jeffrey.
I&#39;m hoping that the next...Good stuff, Jeffrey.<br /><br />I&#39;m hoping that the next stage considers the monstrosity of the cat, since I&#39;d advise against hanging too much on the cat vs. monster divide. Since you&#39;re amid a Derrida discussion, this divide has to give way, <i>especially with a cat</i>, which is the most unhomely of domestic animals (and here I think of <a href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;client=ubuntu&amp;channel=cs&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=erica+fudge+derrida+cat" rel="nofollow">Erica Fudge&#39;s work on the cat</a> but also <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;q=%22notes+on+some+Medieval,+Mystical,+Magical+and+Moral+Cats%22&amp;aq=f&amp;oq=&amp;aqi=" rel="nofollow">Douglas Gray&#39;s excellent article on medieval kittehs</a>). If a monster is &#39;against kind&#39;, then what is the proper behavior or the proper place of cat, a nocturnal carnivore at home, eating (and tormenting) vermin, notorious for budging us out of our place?<br /><br />Since you&#39;re going to Spain, here are some more films on childhood and monsters and the uncanniness of childhood for your delectation.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070040/" rel="nofollow"><i>El espíritu de la colmen</i></a>, which is the ur-text for Pan&#39;s Labyrinth, an ur-text that your Spanish audience will surely know.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074360/" rel="nofollow"><i>Cría cuervos</i></a>, which is one of the most beautiful and frightening films about childhood and its desires that I know. PLUS it features one of the VERY best songs of the 70s, <a href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;client=ubuntu&amp;channel=cs&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=porque+te+vas" rel="nofollow">Porque te Vas</a>.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-4884788380058392782010-10-14T13:08:23.281-04:002010-10-14T13:08:23.281-04:00The demand for self-sacrifice is unjust, and I agr...The demand for self-sacrifice is unjust, and I agree ought to be resisted ... but then again the Labyrinth itself is unjust, making demands of Ofelia that no human being ought to endure. Even if she lives at the end, there is something not right about what she had to to do to gain that second life.<br /><br />Like you, Eileen, it seems to me highly unlikely that she DOES find her way to the fairy kingdom. I hesitate to be too definitive, though, because from what I&#39;ve read del Torro wanted there to be some ambiguity there. And in thinking back on the film, much that unfolds is not watched or told from Ofelia&#39;s point of view, yet still has content in it that has leaked out from the Labyrinth: think of that first &quot;magic&quot; dragonfly that emerges from the forest to follow the car in which she and her mother are speeding towards a &quot;haven.&quot; As I recall Ofelia doesn&#39;t see it, doesn&#39;t have anything to do with it: the first eruption of the other world is known only to the audience.<br /><br />But that&#39;s a slender hook on which to hang a big hope. Too slender, I am sure.Jeffrey J. Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-6244782937761369082010-10-14T12:56:42.542-04:002010-10-14T12:56:42.542-04:00I love that you have brought in &quot;Pan&#39;s La...I love that you have brought in &quot;Pan&#39;s Labyrinth&quot; here, which I think is one of the best [and most depressing] movies I have ever seen--I teach it regularly as part of a segment on &quot;war and heroism,&quot; which typically, is saturated with masculinity and male &quot;heroes,&quot; so Ofelia is a nice change at the end. I actually consider the film to be quite depressing precisely because I think the labyrinth and all of its creatures are purely fictional, only exist in Ofelia&#39;s mind, etc., which is not to say they are any less &quot;real&quot; or tangible, however, pace your comments here. But I can&#39;t believe, nevertheless, that Ofelia is granted some sort of after-life or other-world where she gets to be rewarded, and to continue living in the place she ultimately deserves. I think the film juxtaposes her heroic sacrifice against the selfish violence of everyone around her, but I don&#39;t want to be persuaded [i.e., affectively moved] by this heroic act because I think it just re-instantiates an ethics of violent sacrifice that seems to be so much at the heart of Western ethics. Why does the narrative demand the murder of an innocent [and specifically, female] child? Am I supposed to &quot;take heart&quot; in this fact, that heroism always demands one&#39;s death [or, at least, the ready willingness to sacrifice oneself for another]?<br /><br />But more to the point of your talk, and this part of it, the labyrinth and its creatures, even if mainly generated in Ofelia&#39;s psyche and also through the fairy tales she loves to read, are still real and palpable in the sense that they give shape to Ofelia&#39;s world and her understanding of it and also provide her with access to a cognitive space that allows her to cope with her present surroundings, which involve very real acts of violence, torture, sickness, death, etc.--really, more than a small child should be able to handle, but resilience is all, especially when you have some &quot;monsters&quot; on your side. Which is not to say they are all helpful in only beneficent ways, because they also provide her with &quot;trials&quot; that are menacing and scary, but nevertheless, teach her how to be strong and to survive even in the midst of horror. This is why I like your idea of the monster as both archaic *and* transhistoric--they certainly seem to speak to some very deep cognitive-narrative structures of mind and appear to relate, very palpably, to narratives, or chains of historical events, that are always &quot;set to repeat.&quot; And yet they are so versatile, primarily because they *are* mainly psychic structures, and therefore, very plastic. So I think your talk is getting at something really important relative to new work in cognitive science re: the *materiality* of so-called psychic structures and *effects* and their trans-historical nature. A &quot;monster,&quot; then, even more than just a &quot;sign&quot;/portent/message, is also, let&#39;s say, the very real psycho-figurative *embodiment* of a particular anxiety, or strategy for working through that anxiety, and maybe also a kind of revenant of the unresolved claims of the past. It is no less real than an historical narrative that purports to understand what--anywhere and in any time--actually &quot;happened.&quot; I think Certeau&#39;s &quot;Possession at Loudon&quot; is awfully instructive on that point--history is both above the street and also what lies underneath it, in the subterranean depths, but which also, every now and then, comes up.Eileen Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.com